The Tutorial Is Over
The moment Ryu Hwi switched to his main weapon, the attackers' movements changed entirely.
Each of them must have had a mastery skill for their respective weapon activate.
With status corrections already putting their base physical abilities above his, now they had skills on top of that.
And that was the nature of mastery — proficiency with the weapon itself rose along with it. You instinctively came to understand how the weapon should be handled, and the higher your mastery level climbed, the deeper that understanding grew.
Their attack was on a completely different level from everything that had come before.
"Don't use single-target skills! Intercept him from range with area-of-effect spells!"
Skill — Magnum Strike
Skill — Accelerator
Skill — Dragon's Breath
Attacks with no physical substance to intercept — shockwaves, long-range barrages, wide-area bombardments — were precisely what worked against Ryu Hwi.
Cesseus had grasped the exact properties of Parrying and issued his orders accordingly.
A merciless bombardment with no room even to breathe came pouring down on Ryu Hwi.
He had, in fairness, prepared all sorts of counters for ranged attacks, shockwaves, and area spells — but in this moment, he realized every one of them had been rendered useless.
[This is the spatial-severing effect of Sword Gang. You can now deal damage to things beyond the merely physical, Master.]
So SR+ really does have its price tag for a reason!
Ryu Hwi's blade began to negate not only area attacks but the shockwaves themselves.
The moment the attackers hesitated at the sight, Cesseus barked his next command.
"Damn it — C, pin his feet down!"
One of the others moved at Cesseus's order. The instant his hand flared with light, Ryu Hwi felt his entire body grow heavy.
[Master, you've been hit with a debuff-type skill. The effect is an agility and speed reduction line. The AGI drop is irrelevant to you, Master, but your actual movement speed is being affected.]
YggON dissected his condition. And then, translucent chains rose up from the ground and bound Ryu Hwi's entire body.
[Master, skill effect confirmed. A skill that binds the target's entire body in chains. Effective duration: 5 seconds.]
Yeah, I didn't need you to tell me that part.
"Now! All of you, attack!"
Slow the target with a debuff, bind them with chains, then unleash a coordinated assault.
Against monsters, it was a textbook-effective combination.
Watching them move with such drill-like precision under Cesseus's command made it instantly believable that these were Phantasmas who fought on the front lines.
"And that's that. What an absolutely terrible return on investm—"
Tang.
But Cesseus's sentence never reached its end.
A sound that should never have echoed through World of Phantasm rang out.
"Wh… ugh?"
Something had pierced through the left side of his chest, and Cesseus crumpled to the ground.
Startled by the sudden turn, the attackers stopped their skill activations and stared at him.
What the hell just happened?
Cesseus clutched his left chest, gasping for air. The pain was so overwhelming that even a scream wouldn't come.
"Taking out the boss first is Gamer 101, isn't it?"
Every attacker's gaze snapped toward Ryu Hwi.
Five seconds passed, and the chains holding him faded away into nothing.
Confirming the skill's effect had expired, Ryu Hwi rested his finger on the Gunsword's trigger and whistled.
"I'm done checking what I needed to check. Time to wrap up the tutorial."
"What… how…"
Cesseus forced his mouth open even through the agony.
To still be able to move after taking a bullet through the heart — what terrifying mental fortitude. Ryu Hwi was honestly impressed.
Not that it mattered in the slightest.
"Khahk!"
Another gunshot rang out, and Cesseus collapsed.
The attackers, who had watched everything Ryu Hwi just did, swallowed hard.
BANG!!
They had watched the videos uploaded by Ryu7017 over and over. They had known in advance that his weapon was something that did not exist in World of Phantasm.
A bug that had drifted in from some other game labyrinth.
The data held within game labyrinths was so vast that they hadn't been able to identify exactly what the weapon was.
But the footage had let them roughly piece together its ability.
A weapon-type that granted a temporary attack boost when the trigger was pulled.
That prediction had been accurate — the problem was that the Gunsword's abilities didn't end there.
"Against monsters, it's barely good enough to keep them at arm's length. Against humans, though? It's plenty."
Ryu Hwi had barely used the Gunsword's gun function until now, for two reasons.
First, the gunshots often failed to punch through a monster's thick hide.
The second reason was that he had been saving it as a hidden trump card for battles against other humans.
Since it was a firearm — a weapon class that didn't exist in World of Phantasm — he'd predicted it would be devastatingly effective against gamers.
"Now then, how many are left?"
Ryu Hwi leveled the Gunsword's muzzle at the mass of black-clothed figures.
The men in black each took a step back.
[Master, behind you—]
Faster than YggON's warning, Ryu Hwi's body moved on pure reflex.
An attacker who had been feigning unconsciousness struck at him from behind — and Ryu Hwi dodged without even looking.
"Wha—?!"
The timing had been flawless. The man hadn't moved so much as a finger the entire time he'd been playing dead.
The black-clad ambusher let out a stunned breath.
Ryu Hwi turned to face him, a killing light burning in his eyes.
"I told you. The tutorial's over."
And this really had been nothing more than a tutorial.
Having confirmed the power of Intuition, Ryu Hwi had predicted that with this ability he could hold his own even against Phantasmas — and the prediction had just been proven true.
"Uwaaaaaaaaah!!"
One man fell. Then another.
The attackers dropped one after another, utterly helpless.
[In this game labyrinth, combat is decided by level gaps — in other words, the gamer with superior stats and skills wins. PvP here is fundamentally simple.]
YggON analyzed the situation with cold precision.
[Consequently, the movements of these players — accustomed only to PvE — are riddled with wasted motion.]
Ryu Hwi thought that made perfect sense.
Linzea Guild's bread and butter was World of Phantasm. The hottest game labyrinth on the market right now was World of Phantasm, so there was no reason for them to touch anything else.
Every one of their movements had been optimized for World of Phantasm's system. Both their evasion and their defense leaned on raw stats, which meant their footwork was full of waste.
Ryu Hwi, by contrast, had no stat corrections to lean on. He fought on the premise that a single clean hit meant near-death or outright fatality — and so, naturally, every single one of his movements was honed to eliminate waste.
He cut an enemy down, cut down another, slipped past an attack, cut, and kept cutting his way through. The moment the distance to his opponents widened, he immediately showered them with a baptism of bullets.
And so the attackers had no choice but to desperately force their way into close range.
And close-range combat was…
the home turf of Ryu Hwi, wielder of Intuition and the Sword Saint.
What the hell is that?
5555 couldn't believe the scene unfolding before her eyes.
Sharing Ryu Hwi's field of vision, she recognized at a glance that every one of the attackers was a top-tier World of Phantasm gamer — a Phantasma.
Yet Ryu Hwi was overwhelming them all by himself. And by methods she couldn't even begin to comprehend!
A bug — no, is that thing seriously just a bug?
The Gunsword was not something that existed in World of Phantasm.
Neither was the skill he was using to deflect their attacks right now, nor the one-hit-kill strikes that completely ignored the enemy's stats. None of it could exist under World of Phantasm's system.
And what was even more terrifying than that…
Foresight? No — it looks more like he's moving on pure reflex?
Watching through his own eyes, she could see with perfect clarity just how absurdly the man was moving.
What would a person even have to do to move like that?
Without realizing it, 5555 let out a laugh.
"This is getting more and more fun."
The hottest game labyrinth in Yggdrasil right now was World of Phantasm, and it drew the attention of countless people.
5555, too, kept close tabs on World of Phantasm's information.
By her standards it wasn't a particularly enjoyable game labyrinth, but it had held the number one market share for years running — she couldn't afford to ignore it.
"That this is number one. It's like Yggdrasil itself is furious about it."
And in truth, both the quantity and quality of resources being mined from World of Phantasm were declining.
It wasn't just World of Phantasm, either — it was a problem across game labyrinths as a whole.
Latia, which held a monopoly on game labyrinth creation, was running itself ragged trying to find the cause. But for the lazy, complacent versions of them walking around today, it was an impossible task.
Where did the groundbreaking, ambitious Latia of the early days go?
In the earliest days of the Yggdrasil upheaval, Latia had charged into game labyrinth creation ahead of anyone else, and through trial and error produced a string of masterpieces worthy of the name.
Their current monopoly on labyrinth creation was built on the achievements of that era.
But now? All they looked like was an old tiger jealously guarding its territory.
That was when it happened.
A 'fun guest' arrived at Jucheongwang.
"Truly, life is impossible to predict. Like the abyss of Yggdrasil itself."
Right now, that guest was toying with Phantasmas.
His opponent is bad? Could that possibly be expressed in such simple words?
Even the word "cheater" fell short.
The last of the attackers went down.
This was a PK Prohibited Zone, so no one would die — but they were almost certainly experiencing pain that made death look like mercy.
What's more, logout had been blocked for all of them, so even fleeing was impossible.
If things went badly, their real-world bodies could go into shock or end up brain-dead — though surely some safety measures were in place for that.
And even if a tragic accident did occur, that was none of Ryu Hwi's concern.
These people had trampled plenty of others on their way up. They were simply reaping what they had sown.
[Surrounding gamers are reacting as follows:]
Ryu Hwi walked toward Cesseus.
The man was still too deep in shock to even think about moving. Ryu Hwi seized his mask and ripped it clean off.
"Ha."
He had expected it, and yet actually seeing that face pulled a hollow laugh out of him before anything else.
Ryu Hwi grabbed the man by the collar and hoisted him up high, making sure the other gamers could get a good look at him.
"Cesseus, the twin-blade swordsman of Linzea. Now that his identity's been laid bare before heaven and earth like this, Linzea is going to try everything it can to make this all go away. Am I right?"
The twin-blade swordsman Cesseus — a gamer who'd built his popularity on a pretty face and polished, gentlemanly manners.
He wasn't on Linpel's level, but he was a fairly famous gamer in his own right. The man even had an actual fan club.
"Let me guess — they'll cut the tail clean off. 'It was Cesseus acting alone, the guild had nothing to do with it.' Well, knowing those people, they could absolutely pull that off."
"Nngh… ugh…"
"The rest of Linzea might be watching this very scene, so let me pass along one message."
Ryu Hwi opened his mouth, speaking toward Linzea — and, more precisely, toward the single person he despised most of all.
"Stop wasting time sending other people, and come yourself, Linpel Darius."
He dragged his thumb across his throat.
"I'll finish this for you."
It was a declaration of war thrown straight at Linzea Guild's ace.
"Sent."
Among the gamers who had been watching the battle, one figure draped in a hooded robe sent a message to someone.
While the other gamers were still reeling in shock and awe, the robed figure had been tracking Ryu Hwi's every move, every breath.
Beneath the robe, a pair of eyes gleamed.
"Ryu Hwi."
Murmuring the name of the man at the center of this whole affair, the figure drew a small dagger from within the robe.
The dagger, drinking in a sinister light, reflected Ryu Hwi's figure perfectly in its blade.